Internet Service Providers (ISP's) such as America On Line and IRQ provide a Chat communication interface for their users to talk to each other over the Internet. IRQ estimates they have over 2.5 million users that use their Chat facility. There are many other ISPs competing in this area that also use Chat facilities.
Prior art comprises Chat facilities provided by ISPs. For currently existing Chat facilities, it is the quality and usability of the provided Graphical User Interface which is the main selling point that attracts customers to use a particular service. One service provider provides character-by-character feedback (ie., the receiver sees each character as soon as the sender types the character). An option is typically provided to turn this immediate feedback function off when network latency (time for information delivery) is great. Some services do not provide this function as a result of their overall network inefficiency (ie., current character-by-character feedback requires reliable (TCP/IP) communication which greatly increases the amount and frequency of data required to be delivered over the network). Additionally, this character-by-character feedback function may have undesirable effects because the receiver/addressee can see what the sender is typing before he/she has even decided whether or not to send the text, thereby severely limiting the sender's opportunity for reconciliation.
Thus, there is a need for a method and system which provides efficient network Chat feedback and which allows reconciliation by the sender before the actual text is viewable by the receiver.